Friday, 12 April 2013

Last year I stumbled across a letter in the National Archives written to Ian Clunies Ross on 26th January, 1957 by Mrs Dorothy Harden, a widowed pensioner.

Mrs Harden thanked Clunies Ross for his Australia Day address. She included One pound, a substantial sum from her pension, towards a scholarship for Aboriginal students.

She had also written to the Prime Minister, she said, asking “Mr Menzies would he grant
a percentage of all the mineral wealth of our land...for the education and rehabilitation of the Aborigines."

"I have no illusions that my faint cry will be heeded, but
will not you who can shout and did in your Australia day address, should and
keep on shouting, until a fair dealing is showed these, not them, but fellow
countrymen of ours.

Today is our Anniversary Day, but although a fourth
generation Australian I can take no pride in it when all about us at Lismore
are settlements of the original owners of this land pushed into unwanted
corners…although we are not responsible for the misdeeds of our forefathers,
what place the Aborigine holds in the life of the community fifty years hence
is today our responsibility”

Tuesday, 2 April 2013

History ‘from below’ made its mark in the mid-twentieth
century so that the discipline now readily encompasses groups it previously
marginalised. And yet, while history can appear inclusive in this sense,
historians themselves tend to be relatively culturally homogenous. This paper
draws on research that explores engagement with history in diverse settings (high
schools in regions from multi-cultural south-west Sydney to Aboriginal remote
Wilcannia) to consider how the practice of history itself – what makes a good
historian, or the construction of historical merit – might include or exclude
some members of society. The question, we know, is important, for
identification with a historical past is key to citizenship and social
inclusion. Is history – even history from below – still written by society’s
‘winners’? While this paper links to previous studies in history education and
raises some questions about pedagogy and curricula, we aim in addition to
explore the question of what an inclusive history might look like in all the
ways history is presented and practiced. In this, we seek to look beyond
traditions of social and oral history, which, our research suggests, continues
to exclude some members of society.

Monday, 1 April 2013

Professions grew over centuries but have in recent times
experienced rapid change. A century ago,
very few occupations required formal qualifications. Now, by contrast,
credentials are the key way to access professional opportunity in Australia.
There is no sign of this trend slowing. It has raised the standing of certain
occupations but may have simultaneously erected new barriers to those who, for
want of tertiary qualifications, can no longer access their chosen profession.

Despite their place in regulating the supply of
professionals, universities have not normally controlled the professional standards,
grade levels and pay rates that signify the possession of workplace-based
knowledge. Partnerships with professional bodies were forged to legitimise tertiary
education’s place in the labour market.

The power and equity implications of a growing formalisation
of professional knowledge are not clear. Marxist orthodoxy sees the wresting of
‘craft’ knowledge away from workers as a key mechanism of capitalist power.
Other approaches, however, emphasise the value to both the profession and
society of increased attention to education and professional standards and of
merit-based selection.

This paper draws on a case study of engineering in New South
Wales to consider the implications of the control and regulation of
workplace-based knowledge. It explores the shift away from the pupillage
system, based in workplaces, and the competing authority of educational
institutions and the Institute of Engineers. This case study represents an
initial foray into a larger project on the history of professions in Australia,
exploring the effect of changing conceptions of merit on access to professional
standing.

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About Me

I have kept this blog since 2008. In that time I completed a PhD in the history department at the University of Sydney called “The Ownership of Knowledge in Higher Education in Australia, 1939-1996” and have begun new work. This blog recounts my pathway through my research and thinking to include work on social inclusion, historiography, labour history and the history of knowledge. Hopefully it goes without saying that anything here is a draft. It is a blog, not a book. Lots of times I could be wrong - if I am, please tell me.